


I Found Out

by thisbirdhadflown



Category: The Beatles (Band)
Genre: Character Study, Drabble, Grief/Mourning, John/Paul implied, Primal Scream Therapy, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-29
Updated: 2020-01-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:54:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22462168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisbirdhadflown/pseuds/thisbirdhadflown
Summary: "No one can harm you, feel your own pain"
Comments: 2
Kudos: 30





	I Found Out

**Author's Note:**

> Hi loves. This isn't related to any other fic (and I am definitely still going to post chapter 2 of WFD soon, I just got distracted for a moment) but I just had this urge to write some sort of drabble about John in PST and 1980 John. Death isn't described in detail, but it is a major theme so please be mindful. As always, you're very welcome to say hello to me at thisbirdhadflownx on tumblr xxx

He’s on the floor, shivering. Blood running hot, skin sweating cold. His throat is raw, feeling like red stained glass. When the therapist speaks, his voice is like a needle pinning down his soul. The coiled tension in his trembling body rattles, saline running thick and fast from his eyes. These threaded seams bursting open, all of it projected onto the ceiling above. He cries out with his voice like tattered and torn material. He splutters and writhes, every fear and trauma caged behind his ribs unleashes with a strangled yell. The live-wires in his mind snap and hiss. The anger, the sadness. Two concepts morphing into one. They flicker in and out from each other, never apart. 

The therapist strokes his hair, instructs him further. And John can’t list off the names of the people who have abandoned him, the bodies that have been buried. But their faces - the impressions of them - they all surge forward into his consciousness. 

_Uncle George hugging him at the front door of Mendips, the smell of smoke and beer swimming in his cotton vest. The taste of the sweets encased in cellophane he would tuck under John’s pillow. All those childish joys snapped shut like a storybook._

_His Dad’s voice, the tentative promise of New Zealand. The gruff demand to choose between the two things John needs equally. The resigned sigh when there should have been tears and protest._

_His Mum’s copper hair flowing just over her shoulder as she inspects the positioning of her fingers on the frets of the banjo. Each chord now echoed in his heart beats. Her wicked smile and summer laughter. The light being stripped from her soul just when he could allow his heart to be warmed by it._

_Stuart with paint splattered hands and a sharp freckled face working into the ungodly hours of the night. Letters, twenty pages long, written in the feverish desperation to be heard. His whole life compressed into twenty one years. Not nearly enough. He should have lived._

_Flashes of grand theatrics. Moments of thoughtful quiet and shy charm. Brian in Barcelona curled up on the bathroom tiles. Eyes gravely serious and glassy. “Don’t ever throw it in my face that I’m a fag. Promise me.” Torn from his life source, the friends he loved most, while John sat by a campfire in Wales._

It builds and builds, like a certain orchestral climax just about to erupt. He grits his teeth, breath shuddering in his lungs. _Paul_.

His eyes open, the therapist tells him to close them again. He does, but everything has slipped from underneath him. Sand falling through his fingers. Stormy skies refusing to burst open with rain. _Key West. Crying into Paul’s collar, holding him like a lover._

You can scream yourself raw, but you can never take back the truths kept in a glass heart. 

He learns as much as he needs to by the time he has to leave. The pain never really goes away, Janov tells him. John knows how it goes. The Maharishi told him just as much. The answer slithers away from his grasp once again.

-

Life begins at forty. It’s the alluring promise of what he’s been searching for his entire life. That divine answer he hoped India would give him, walking along the dusty roads wrapped up in white sheets. The meaning he was trying to find in the carnage of The Beatles. What he was trying to uncover when he screamed out his lungs for days on end, weeping and curled up on the floorboards. You don’t stop loving the people that hurt you, he knows this. You don’t stop looking over Central Park from your apartment window and longing for sprawling hills and fresh air and ocean-side cottages.

The closest he’s ever gotten was on that sailing trip a few months ago, in the eye of a storm that could have killed him. That wash of freedom that came as he helped steer the boat and steady it like a wrangled horse. The silver slickness of ocean coating his exposed skin, the feeling of _real air_ ballooning his lungs. They were sailing towards the pale sun, eggshell light slipping through the clouds. Sweeps of seafoam over his face as he sung sea shanties just because it felt good. Singing because _he felt_ _free_ , rather than trapped. It was fantastic - knowing himself like that again. 

_“One of these days_

_When my feet are on the ground_

_I'm gonna look around and see_

_See what's right and see what's there_

_And breathe fresh air, ever after, ever after_

_Breathe fresh air, ever after!”_

He had laughed, head thrown back. The ocean jolting the vessel in a learned rhythm as he roots his feet on the deck and keeps his grip on the dangling ropes. Looking out at the rolling waves, blue and silver, he’s reminded of sprawling fields. Now and then, he recognises himself. His true laugh. His true voice. His true love. 


End file.
